Just another avenue for cross-examination of MLB’s star witness should they attempt to suspend players in the Biogenesis thing. From the Daily News:

The owner of the South Florida anti-aging clinic at the center of baseball’s latest doping scandal asked embattled Yankee star Alex Rodriguez for financial help after Major League Baseball filed a lawsuit that alleged he had sold performance-enhancing drugs to Major League Baseball players.

When Rodriguez rebuffed Anthony Bosch’s request for money, believed to be in the hundreds of thousands, the self-styled “biochemist” turned to a strange bedfellow — MLB.

The Daily News spins this as MLB being “worried” and concerned about what Bosch might do and then reaching out to assist him. It’s worth asking, however, if Bosch was seeking cash in all of this before, what exactly is he getting from MLB now? It has been reported that MLB has agreed to drop the lawsuit it filed against him earlier this year, to pay his legal bills, to indemnify him for any civil liability that arises from his cooperation, to provide him with personal security and to intervene on his behalf if he gets into criminal trouble of his own. That stuff is all very valuable.

But if this report is accurate, he was seeking cash from A-Rod very recently. Is he now getting cash from MLB? Did he approach any other players in order to get cash before? All witnesses in Bosch’s situation are vulnerable to cross-examination about what they’re getting in exchange for their testimony. But if it’s cash on the barrelhead for non-expert testimony or if he has peddled his loyalty to both sides of the case and decided to go all-in with the one who gave him the best deal, his credibility is in even greater trouble than your typical hired-gun witness.

There have been reports of ex-Biogenesis employees trying to sell documents to the press, essentially holding an auction for information. Has Anthony Bosch done the same thing with his testimony? If we don’t find out before MLB takes any action in this matter, we will certainly find out when the players and the union’s lawyers attack Bosch with it in an arbitration later.

Sorry Dan, but that’s exactly what happens in civil suits all the time. And credibility certainly matters, especially when you consider that only last month we all heard reports of people from Arod’s camp trying to buy these documents to destroy them.

dan1111 - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:13 AM

@awesomenar, I meant that their credibility is irrelevant to MLB’s steroid investigation. Even if A-Rod and Braun are the world’s biggest liars, it doesn’t make them any more or less guilty of taking steroids. But if Bosch is a liar, people could be suspended based on his lies.

awesomenar: “Sorry Dan, but that’s exactly what happens in civil suits all the time.”
Not that often in civil suits, it’s a risky thing to do. If the other side finds out that a fact witness is getting paid or is promised valuable consideration for their testimony that leaves the witness open for impeachment and the jury often discounts anything that he says. It also leaves the side presenting such testimony open for a charge of suborning perjury if something the witness says can be disproved. On the other hand, in a criminal case where the stakes are higher, the State often presents the testimony of a co-defendant who has been promised immunity or reduced jail time to testify and juries usually go along with it. Go figure.

Actually Craig is falling short BIG TIME. Bosch’s character will probably be called into question. But all Bosch really has to do is corroborate enough of his statements to build credibility. Craig and his fellow apologists are treating this like some kind of “he said, she said” rape investigation. In reality, all they need are several people corroborating the same thing (which by some accounts, they have) along with cell phone records that place all parties in the same location at the same time, along with the records that MLB (and the Feds) already have, and maybe a few deposited checks, received emails or text messages and WHAM, you have yourself a case. Since this would (presumably) be a civil case, I’m pretty sure the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is replaced with something weaker (like what happened to OJ), so it could be fairly winnable for MLB. Of course, there is a lot of stuff we don’t know, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

I think Craig and his fellow apologists are suffering from CSI Syndrome. Unless you show them surveillance footage of a baseball player injecting a clearly marked “STEROID” syringe into his own ass, all baseball players are basically innocent of PED use. Although, I’m sure Craig would argue that we couldn’t prove that the “STEROID” syringe actually contained steroids, or he would have a problem with how the footage was acquired, or he’d pull out some kind of arcane, little known, legal precedent which makes down = up.

I bumped into him on the street the other day and he offered me the names of two MLB players for 20 bucks and a 40 of Olde English. I fell for it and he bolted the second he got the 40 oz. in his hands. I chased him back to a limo and a couple of big leg breaker types. They stopped me, asked what the problem was, and if I had any illegal footage of major league baseball games on my cell phone. Oddly the limo plates said BIGJEFF.

Considering what a lowlife this guy apparently is,it further begs the question of why these guys ever became involved with him in any way shape or form……whatever legitimate business one could conceivably have with him,it would seem there would be better sources for it……There is no shortage of trainers,training centers,sports medicine clinics etc. that would seem a better option .Perhaps just stop taking the shit would be the best option at this point??

Well, careful what you ask for….that sounds good on the surface except there are probably dozens of little Biogenesis clinics around the country catering to professional athletes. This is bigger than A-Rod or Braun and the 20 or so players mentioned. I’m guesssing hundreds of players are utilzing these clinics in some manor or another and they just haven’t been caught because the desinger drugs are getting better every day.

These new drugs are not like they were 20 years ago with Bonds and Sosa, where you’re injecting huga ass needles and your head grows 5 sizes bigger. Look at Braun for example: He has not changed physically whatsover since highschool. His stance; they way he runs is the same. His stats are virtually the same and consistant every year?

MLB better be careful. Every major league team will be affected by this at one time or another. Plus, they’re opening up a can of worms with players from years and years ago. Back in the glory days of baseball 40’s, 50’s & 60’s… players were popping amphetimines like candy, so they could stay on the field and collect all these wonderful stas that we fans claim to be so sacred. Those were PED’s too !

I’ll ask the question that no one around here seems to want to ask. If this guy’s a lowlife, drug dealing liar as Mr. Calcaterra points out, then why would fine upstanding citizens such as Braun and Rodriguez be involved with him?

I’d be willing to bet Bosch has hundreds of other clients that aren’t professional athletes. Probably lots of old folks interested in his “anti-aging” services. Your doctor might run a pill mill and if you don’t engage his prescription writing services you’d likely never know until he’s arrested.

Funny thing about lying scumbag lowlife drug dealers….they can often appear as fine upstanding business people and can fool people for decades before the nature of their nefarious deeds is discovered. Bernie Madoff “fooled” hundreds of allegedly business savvy rich people for decades. The founders of pretty much any religion are con-men (and women) that get people to buy what they are selling, and many of those cons are still ongoing today. Often, you don’t realize how deceptive and sleazy someone is….until you do.

If there is hard evidence that guys are guilty, they should be punished according to the rules of the CBA….but using the fact that someone got involve with a character that turned out to be unsavory as some sort of example of purposeful wrong doing is to ignore your own naivete.

But…the rules in MLB related to illegal substances and the precedence for getting any kind of supplement/substance approved before taking it are so well known by now, that there simply is no reason that any MLB player should have been involved with this guy without having his products approved by MLB. The fact that they didn’t, makes it a very easy jump to the assumption that they didn’t want MLB to know what they were taking.

Of course, the assumption in all of this is that they actually received some sort of substance from Bosch. Whether or not they took it is probably irrelevant.

paperlions - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:21 AM

I agree that there is no reason a player should get PEDs from him or anyone. But some people have intimated that somehow everyone should have already known this guy was a lying POS and that any attorney consultation or visit by a relative should be viewed suspiciously.

I agree that most of these guys probably went there looking for a drug boost and knew they were violating the CBA. I am just not willing to condemn everyone when I still have no evidence of it. Would it be great if they were caught (assuming guilt)? Sure. But to me there is a huge thick line between suspicion and guilt….and I’m not crossing it without good reason.

Heck, objectively, I should be rooting for MLB to suspend all these guys. No Cardinals on the list or with strong ties to people on the list (except for Jon Jay, who was born and raised in Miami and went to the U).

historiophiliac - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:07 AM

I gave you a thumb up even as I savored your limitless capacity for tolerance.

paperlions - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:17 AM

I didn’t mean to intimate that I tolerate scum bags. I just realize that I likely am no better at a priori identification of scum bags than your average person…and that scum bags can be very good at what they do (deceiving people).

historiophiliac - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:21 AM

That was sarcasm, paper.

paperlions - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:23 AM

Oh. Didn’t recognize the font. Sorry.

That was sarcasm. I’m not sorry.

historiophiliac - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:24 AM

And, good morning to you too.

paperlions - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:24 AM

So…you didn’t notice the sarcasm in the second half! Hah!

historiophiliac - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:25 AM

Don’t try that double switcheroo with me, mister!

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged - Jun 6, 2013 at 11:39 AM

that there simply is no reason that any MLB player should have been involved with this guy without having his products approved by MLB.

Possibly yes, but here’s a random thought. Braun has never denied his association with Bosch. He merely stated that he consulted with him about his appeal last year. There’s a perfectly legitimate reason to consult with a “doctor” who might claim to be an “expert” on these matters. If Bosch is well known in the Miami area, maybe athletes have family members looking into “anti-aging” and might get a sweetheart deal so the doc can say he “services” Arod’s family (teehee).

There are plenty of reasons, whether logical or not, that a player might be involved with this guy that goes beyond getting PEDs from him.

Let’s say the apologists succeed in painting Bosch as total scum. The problem for them is that it may be more than just his word – he may have records from his clinic (including documents produced by other employees) that fully back his claims. The people who created these documents could be better witnesses than Bosch. And he will be a better witness if he has documents that support his claims. It may be like Jose Canseco – smarmy and self-serving, but correct. I’m not sure what support Bosch will have for any of his claims, but it is interesting to me that Craig and friends have not (to my recollection) addressed this point, which may bolster his story.

Their point has consistently been that MLB is going to have a tough time making punishments stick based solely upon Bosch’s word. That automatically means that it’s a completely different story with other witnesses and corroborating evidence.

Let’s be objective about this – you paint Craig as an “apologist” trying paint Bosch as a total scum. Go back and read the writings and tweets of TJ Quinn, Buster Olney, Tom Verducci, Mike Freeman, and others who have appointed themselves the high priests of morale & chemical balance in Baseball after Braun said that his legal team consulted with Bosch. Now read their comments on Bosch. Sense a pattern? They’ve done a complete 180 on him.

The more I read and hear on ESPN, SI, and some others (with exceptions for Lester Munson, Jay Jaffee, Ken Rosenthal, and a few others), the more I get the impression that the writers are trying harder to convict all of these guys, and specifically Braun, than MLB is. And that’s a huge problem.

“During the course of preparing for my successful appeal last year, my attorneys, who were previously familiar with Tony Bosch, used him as a consultant. More specifically, he answered questions about T/E ratio and possibilities of tampering with samples.

There was a dispute over compensation for Bosch’s work, which is why my lawyer and I are listed under ‘moneys owed’ and not on any other list.

I have nothing to hide and have never had any other relationship with Bosch.

I will fully cooperate with any inquiry into this matter.”

The more you attach Bosch’s credibility the more you naturally have to ask why attorneys would consult a lowlife drug dealing liar.

He’d not been arrested at this point. Note dispute over compensation. Braun’s attorneys may very well have decided that Bosch was not reliable. I have not heard that his expertise was relied on in the defense, just that they had a conversation with Bosch and he tried to bill $40,000 for it.

At this point, it is somewhat obvious that most of the details in the original OTL story were inaccurate. Media outlets have an agenda: maximize the number of viewers, listeners, readers and it is a highly competitive mart. Unless there is real evidence, then any “story” should be viewed dubiously.

Everyone has an agenda, including Craig who believes that the Performance Enhancing properties of Performance Enhancing Drugs are overblown, thus the rules preventing their usage are dumb and anyone who goes after a player for violation of those rules is dumb.

paperlions - Jun 6, 2013 at 9:53 AM

Feel free to provide evidence that effects of steroids are not over blown by the media. Again, many many people have used the available data to find a signal of steroid use, and it doesn’t exist. Whatever effect they might have had, no one can quantify it or disentangle it from other variables that are far more correlated with offense than apparent steroid use.

If steroids really did increase power, then every player must have started taking them in 1993, because all players, even guys that used to hit < 3 HR/year started hitting a lot more HRs.

Most of this stems from the Quinn tweets that MLB is about to suspend 20+ players with several 100 game suspensions before they apparently even spoke to Bosch. Whoever leaked that info was terribly irresponsible.

Shocker that ESPN was more interested in getting a story first than getting a story right.

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged - Jun 6, 2013 at 11:42 AM

Correct, I’m just sick and tired of people ripping the process or coming at it from some asinine stance that it’s a dumb rule and thus violation of it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Who has ever made this point? Many of us, like paperlions noted, think that the actual effect of steroids is overblown. But I cannot recall anyone, especially on this website, stating that violating the rules about PEDs are dumb and therefore the punishments should be lessened.

Let’s say I work for MLB enforcement, and we find out that Tony Bosch was attempting to blackmail, or outright sell, all of his documents to A-Rod.

Now, none of this yet is public knowledge, so I go “on deep background” to TJ Quinn & a friend a the Post or some other NY paper that we’ve learned that A-Rod is trying to buy all of Bosch’s records.

Now, the facts are still the same – there’s been a conversation about the transfer of documents in exchange for monetary compensation – but how it’s released to the public via TJ Quinn or NY Daily News, etc. presents a much more slanted view.

Back in the old days before the emergence of the internet, twitter, and the like, we had to verify stories like this 2-3 times before we went to press, or took them on the air. My first news director would have killed me if I ever did something like TJ Quinn did and ESPN did.

It’s common practice in various legal matters to consult with a variety of experts, including those that may have operated on the other side of the law.

I’ll give you an example: The FBI, for years now, has utilized Frank Abagnale, Jr. Go look him up…as then ask yourself the same question.

It’s a common practice in legal & law enforcement circles.

A side note, as well – I remember reading TJ Quinn’s comments & tweets on Bosch after Braun’s statement about using Bosch as a consultant, and remember thinking how grossly ignorant his comments were for someone who claimed to be an “investigative reporter”.

The real question you need to be asking is why, now, are the media outlets like ESPN and SI who bashed Bosch now working so hard to repair his image?

Why is MLB the only league in the world that tries to uphold the moral standards of the Olympics? Why do we never ever ever ever ever hear about PEDs and steroids in the NBA, NFL or NHL? Because those leagues rightfully do not care about it.

I don’t give any kind of a shit about players taking drugs, every single player from the 50s-90s took greenies at least once, that was a very powerful narcotic amphetamine a civilian could get arrested for having, so…shut up & let them play. I’d rather see Braun play baseball awesome than some scrub weakly ground out, if you don’t agree with this, you are a damn fool who is lying to themselves.

The NFL doesn’t wage vendetta’s and media wars against it’s own players. NFL ownership is smart enough to realize that the players are the product that generates 100% of their revenue, and that they should conduct testing and punish those caught, rather than engage in an endless witch-hunt. In addition, no football records are held sacred such that some portions of the media (and fan base) that wax nostalgic are bent on hanging those that broke said records.

jfk69 - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:02 AM

In the NFL greenies were popped liked candy every Sunday. Lyle Alzado said as much regarding locker rooms and the trainers room back in the 70″s and 80″s

I’d love to see that term “apologist” actually defined by one of these people. I have the distinct impression that they don’t know what it means.

As far as I can tell, MLB hasn’t made public what, if any, material evidence it has against any players. Material evidence, by the way, is NOT the word of Anthony Bosch. I’m not sure how anyone who’s interested in getting to the bottom of this can address this based on “evidence” when no one knows what that evidence is. So far what we have is Anthony Bosch and his testimony which, according to the most recent reports, he hasn’t even provided yet to MLB. All we know is that he PLANS to cooperate for significant compensation. In addition to this, we also have reports of Bosh’s willingness to apparently sell his testimony. And that’s about it.

Its apparent even to an utter fool that Bosch has legitimate credibility problems. What’s so apologistic about pointing that out?

You keep using this word … I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also confusing many: conflating PED use with capital murder; the difference between a collectively bargained disciplinary process and a criminal prosecution; discerning their elbows from their assholes … I could go on all day but you get the point.

unclemosesgreen - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:01 AM

Also lots of people seem to think Anthony Bosch is a doctor of some kind. While he is Dr. Feelgood, he’s not an actual doctor. He bills himself as a nutritionist. His father is a well-known physician, and they got their start with an MLB clientele by shooting up Manny Ramirez with a delightful cocktail of homerun-producing testicle-shrinking mystery juice around 2008.

Calling yourself a “nutritionist” is quite clever, legally speaking, since it a not a regulated profession. Poof! I’m a nutrionist now as well. Well, off to the ballparks.

cur68 - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:19 AM

Uncle Mo: See that article citing ARod as attempting to buy incriminating documents from Bosch? I always wondered about that one. In the course of ARod Hate I’ve seen all kinds of stuff where he does or says something innocuous and its somehow turned into a capital crime. I recall the Great ARod Defunct Charity Debate (a charity run by his ex-wife that was no longer being administered or funded by ARod: somehow he got demonized for that one even though he annually gave millions to other causes, through other means). I don’t have to stretch my imagination too far to conceive (there’s that word again!) of the notion that Bosch attempts to get money from ARod (blackmail?) in return for documents and its reported as the exact opposite scenario. In fact, that’s pretty likely, given that we now hear that is was BOSCH attempting to get money from AROD! The two reports are in direct opposition of each other! One of those reports is either flat wrong, or seriously misrepresenting how things happened. Given the level of “Everything’s Alex Rodriguez’s Fault” you tend to see out of the New York Media, I know which version I’m betting on.

unclemosesgreen - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:58 AM

You have a point. But then again, everything is ARod’s fault.

I see the ARod – Bosch thing as a complex dance between different kinds of rats – wharf rat vs. fat rat, a thing of circling and posturing and negotiations – and all the while the wharf rat was negotiating with the King Rat – the Selig Rat – and hopefully the wharf rat was wearing a wire while negotiating with the Selig Rat and the fat rat both.

heyblueyoustink - Jun 6, 2013 at 9:27 AM

It seems to me due process is a matter of the courts, the law, the government.

MLB is a privatized organization, is it not? While every private enterprise would be intelligent in establishing a system for due process in compliance with state and federal employment laws, in the end, there’s no requirement to follow any kind of stringent beyond the law “due process” because people say so when they disagree with an employer’s viewpoint or charicterization.

Due process belongs in courts, not neccesarily in private enterprise. If you were monkeying with numbers at your job, to a large extent ( where these guys get paid millions of dollars ) , how long do you think you would survive there? How much “due process” would you expect?

Am I guilty or not? I’d like corroborated testimony or physical evidence to show I monkeyed (?) with something so I’m not a scapegoat. Besides, private enterprise dumps the folks that can’t defend themselves and come up with cushy severance packages for the ones that can. Neither establishes guilt.

heyblueyoustink - Jun 6, 2013 at 9:55 AM

” Besides, private enterprise dumps the folks that can’t defend themselves and come up with cushy severance packages for the ones that can. ”

But that’s the right of a private enterprise, and the employee then has the right to sue if they feel they’ve been wronged.

See, i’m not assuming anyone is guilty nor name calling anyone an apologist, but if an employer is being scandalized by an employee’s actions, percieved or no, or their image is being slandered ( hard to do that any further with baseball per the steroid era ) , it *is* reasonable for that employer to take action.

Because the customer, you and I are king.

Personally, I wish they would just allow everything so we wouldn’t have this kind of stuff to analyze.

raysfan1 - Jun 6, 2013 at 9:58 AM

Due process does not have to mean criminal due process either. There are processes spelled out in the CBA between MLB and the MLBPA, including appeals and arbitration hearings, etc. failure by MLB to follow their own written procedures would be a failure of due process.

Has there ever been any evidence or corroborated testimony that Laurenzi actually monkeyed with Braun’s sample? Sure he didn’t follow procedure, but that’s a long way from actually monkeying with the sample. Due process works both ways….right????

I agree with what you are suggesting in general but the specific case of MLB is what troubles me. They receive one of the rare anti-trust exemptions and are considered rightly or wrongly as the all-American pastime or at least the representative of that. I would hope that institution would have the highest standards when considering the consequences of suspension and dealing with these dodgy characters. The other problem is this makes MLB look bad if they jump the gun or get burned by appeal again. If done properly we shouldn’t hear about it until the suspension is handed out and the players involved are caught red handed.

Strictly speaking, we have no idea why the arbitrator ruled in Braun’s favor. Interestingly, his ruling is sealed. So how much the piss handler is actually a scapegoat is more a matter for the media and our speculation than whether or not he was the focus of blame during the appeal.

historiophiliac - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:15 AM

I agree with raysfan. When you have a CBA and an arbitration process (with appeal to the courts when necessary), you have to have some kind of due process. A regular “at-will” job is not the same thing at all.

dluxxx - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:21 AM

When there is an arbitration process, an appeals process, and an opportunity to defend yourself, then there is due process. If the MLBPA hadn’t fought for the rights to appeal the league’s discipline, then you would be absolutly correct. However, they can. So some form of due process is involved.

I’m talking about Ryan Braun’s own words in his press conference after the appeal was upheld.

“We spoke to biochemists and scientists and we asked them, ‘How difficult would it be to tamper with somebody’s sample?’ And their response was that, ‘If they were motivated, it would be extremely easy.’ Again, that’s why it’s so important to get it out of the hands of the only person in the world who knows whose sample it is. As soon as it gets to FedEx, they don’t know whose sample it is. As soon as it gets to the lab, they don’t know whose sample it is. That’s why it’s extremely important.”

Here’s a link to all of Braun’s words if you think I’m mis-quoting him

Absolutely ZERO evidence or corroborated testimony from Braun about Laurenzi tampering with a samlpe. Just a suggestion thrown out during a press conference.

Seems like Braun likes due process for himself but not for anyone else.

heyblueyoustink - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:37 AM

It’s essentially the same process except backwards at one point: it’s just instead of private judgement and a court date, it’s a court date and private judgement to follow. There are elements of investigation, discovery etc. in both cases.

In the end, the scandal is a blight on the business of baseball. I can understand ownership wanting it to be a problem gone from the forefront, from a business point of view.

The handler wasn’t the one on trial. He faced no penalties for real or imagined actions. If he were actually sued or indicted then he would receive due process. Braun’s lawyers, probably smarmy bastards, raised the question in the sequence of due process that the handler could have altered the sample. He freely admitted to holding the urine over the weekend. He was able to testify about his actions. What more do you want in that situation?

lazlosother - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:48 AM

The MLBPA and MLB have a labor agreement, which spells out quite specifically what the “due process” is when it comes to PEDs. MLB can’t just decide players have sullied the good name of baseball and suspend them. They have to work through the process they negotiated and agreed to.

People say mean things about other people all the time. I don’t even know if the handler was fired from his second job as urine collector. I hardly think his life was ruined. The court of public opinion sadly does not have due process. However the people that can suffer real appreciable penalties in court receive due process. I suspect the poor urine handler should have followed the very clear protocols.

dluxxx - Jun 6, 2013 at 11:14 AM

@oldskimmy26
You talk about ruining someone’s reputation with no evidence, but that’s exactly what one could argue happened to Braun. The suspension didn’t stand up. Something was wrong with the evidence, and because we aren’t privey to that information, we only have pure conjecture.

So, if you poll baseball fans, I would guess the majority of them think that Braun has used steroids, even though he was found innocent. I would say that this certainly has a greater affect on Braun’s career than Laurenzi’s. Hell, I wouldn’t even know Laurenzi’s name if I didn’t read your comment.

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged - Jun 6, 2013 at 11:46 AM

The simple fact of the matter is that everyone here calling for “due process” is only interested in that process for players accused of PED use. They’re not interested in giving it to anyone else.

Why do you keep bringing this up? The tester has rights as well, within the legal system. If he feels disparaged by Braun, he could have brought him to court on slander charges. I don’t think anyone here would say the tester wasn’t in his right to do so. So far we’ve heard nothing, so don’t blame us (due processor defenders) because the tester has availed himself of his right(s) under the law.

nbjays - Jun 6, 2013 at 12:36 PM

The really ironic part of all of this is the fact that if “due process” had been followed by MLB from the get-go, Ryan Braun’s name would never have been part of this conversation except for the alleged consultation with Bosch by his legal team.

Had MLB followed its own rules, Braun would have tested positive, appealed, and won his appeal all in complete confidentiality and we’d never know anything happened. Only upon failure to win said appeal would anything be released for public consumption… if MLB followed its own rules for “due process”.

Things that make you go “Hmmmm”.

nategearhart - Jun 6, 2013 at 10:05 AM

Agreed. Of all the times I’ve seen bloggers or commenters (commentors?) called “apologist” (including myself…I think I’m up to 4 now), not once has that person said something along the lines of “PEDs are fine” or “we should never punish PED users” or “these guys are totally innocent”.

Craig, could you address whether HIPAA and/or the medical care provider-patient privilege may come into play with MLB’s retention of this guy as a potential witness? I mean, assuming some of the players admit to being his patient… Thanks Craig, I appreciate your perspective on these issues – it’s rather rare. Thanks!

If you didn’t know it was illegally run, then would you have some sort of defense? Just because Bosch wasn’t liscensed, that doesn’t mean that someone in the clinic wasn’t.

If there isn’t any HIPAA protections, you would think that they could at least put some sort of gag order on Bosch to keep him from talking. I don’t know.

I think that one way or another, Bosch is in deep doo-doo. If I was one of these players, and I got suspended, I would go right back after him and sue for everything he has (probably nothing) to put him in debt for the rest of his life. If they went in with good faith thinking that he was a legitimate clinic, and he steered them wrong, I would try to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Criminal and civil proceedings all around.

He should have just stuck with having MLB breathing down his neck. At least he had a legal leg to stand on there…

I don’t think a patient’s rights, especially if that patient is unaware of the illegality of a clinic and/or didn’t purchase illegal substances as I’m sure Bosch treated and sold many legal supplements as well (see Gonzalez, Gio apparently), would be voided.

I’m pretty sure there will be a squabble over whether or not patient’s rights applied b/c Bosch was not a licensed physician. Also, does the CBA require waiving privacy in regards to drug info? Or, do the players sign a waiver separately? I don’t know. That may be built in, and in that case, they don’t have privacy on that matter. Generally, players have less medical privacy, it seems. We learn all kinds of stuff about them that you couldn’t announce about regular working stiffs.

I could be wrong on this – and probably am, just for the record – but for HIPAA to be applied, shouldn’t the pharmaceutical medications used be regulated by the FDA? I’m not sure that over-the-counter, non-FDA regulated treatments, including those that are classified as homeopathic, are subject to HIPAA & other patient privacy conditions.

Again, very well could be wrong on that. The way today is going…I probably am.

Bosch is no saint, but it isn’t as if Braun and Alex have a ton of credibility either. This is a classic he said he said and if Bosch has paperwork that shows a reasonable likelihood of player misconduct then the suspensions will be upheld. Simple as that.

You’d be surprised, though, what courts will credit just because it’s written down. I’m not defending Bosch there. I’m just saying that generally. You can’t assume it will be dismissed. The arbitrator will consider all of this in making a determination.

Lets see….PED PUSHER,BLACKMAILER,EXTORTIONIST and bribery thrown for good measure.
I would have went to the DA and let the chips fall where they may.
FLORIDA DA should be filing charges any day now. Major League Baseball is not a court of law with clown judge Bud clueless Selig running his own Salem witch trial.

This is MLB’s witness, this is the backbone of their case ? Has anyone considered that MLB WANT’S to lose this case so they can continue to profit on their stars ? Bosch’s next step was to turn to the press, if it was revealed that this guy supplied Major Leaguers with PED’s & MLB failed to act it would be a huge black eye for the league. So the best course of action financially is to put together a weak case against the suspects, lose the case then continue to profit off of the league’s stars & move on. Selig & MLB has proven time & time again they only care about dollars & cents, keeping the league clean & putting a balanced product on the field has never been a priority.

It’s a classic legal tactic. Don’t go for an outright win, just try to muddy the waters enough that no one can tell what happened. You’re out for “not guilty”, not “innocent”. MLB can say, “We tried”, and no one, especially the bankable stars, gets any punishment.

Craig, do you think ARod et al. used steroids? Or if you don’t want to take a position on that, do you think MLB has a responsibility to to whatever it can ethically do in order to determine whether or not they did?

We already know that he did, in large part because he admitted to it. Craig has also repeatedly written, despite the chorus of accusations from the local decerebrates that he’s trying to “protect” or “excuse” the abusers, that this particular gambit on behalf of MLB is not only not ethical but legally fruitless. You ought to go back to enjoying your anonymity.

I certainly can’t excuse all of MLB’s conduct, but as a fan, use of PEDs does in fact bother me, and if MLB’s testing policy is failing, as it now appears to be, that bothers me too. Saying that the league’s motives and conduct are bad is, to some extent, beside the point..

Of course Bosch is a low life. Low lifes and cheaters hang together. Remeber what a low life Canseco was? All he did was tell the truth while the rest of the cheaters lied. I can’t believe how many so called baseball fans support these cheaters of the game.